LABOUR are forecast to lose up to 1,500 seats nationwide in next week's local government elections - and for Tory leader William Hague's sake, they better had.

For just as his party seems prepared to put its foot on the bottom rung of a revival with gains in the town halls, he seems to have jeopardised it with a policy shake-up aimed at giving the Tories greater appeal - eventually - while risking it being torn apart right now in the middle of an election campaign.

And how more fundamental of a reform could there be than the jettisoning of the Conservatives' Thatcherite ideals?

This came with the somersault revealed last week by deputy leader Peter Lilley, formerly an ardent Maggie groupie, who, rejecting the notion of private funding of the health, education and welfare services, repudiated the sacred Conservative canons of free enterprise and self-help.

Lady Thatcher is reported to have gone ballistic.

Half the Shadow Cabinet is in open revolt.

Several Tory MPs are understood to be upset.

Maverick ex-minister Alan Clark even calls Hague incompetent.

And many in the Tory grassroots, where Maggie and her 'ism' remain beatified, will be mystified as to why this U-turn has been launched now. Mr Hague says that those whose feathers have been ruffled will have to unruffle them - as this is the direction in which he is taking the Tories now.

Indeed, it might be the right approach for a comeback.

Mr Hague, in his listening-to-the-voters exercises, seems to have got the idea that many people think the Tories are not really committed to the NHS and education and, as a result, painted an uncaring portrait of themselves to the electorate.

The irony of him wanting the party to become more like Labour while New Labour has become more like the Tories is, of course, immense.

But where is the wisdom of Mr Hague doing this right now and provoking an inevitable internal row in the middle of the elections for the town halls and the Scottish and Welsh assemblies and on the brink of the European elections which are already guaranteed to highlight the huge ideological split the party has over relations with the EU?

Whatever the effects of the shift of direction, the timing could hardly be worse.

Mr Hague will need every vote for the Tories and every gain as armour against his critics.

That Labour stand to lose more than 1,500 seats is likely to stem from voter apathy and them being up there to be shot down from the last time the 13,000 seats being contested were up for grabs. That was in 1995, when they grabbed an even bigger share of the vote than they did in their landslide general election victory two years later.

The Tory leader had better hope for more than 1,500 wins if he is to feel safe.

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